Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[NiX]

Best Buy sold my pre-order. Wasted an hour and a half of my friends time driving to the next closest one to see if they had a copy.

Bought it off Green Man Gaming for Steam. Fuck big box retailers.

[Teleku]

Out of curiosity, why weren't you just getting it from Steam to begin with?  Why bother with Best Buy?

[Trippy]

Apparently if you put your weapons and spells into Favorites you can mouse over them in the Favorite menu and bind them to a number key. Why the fuck Steam doesn't automatically include a .pdf of the manual is beyond me.

They do for some games. I would assume for this one the publisher didn't provide one.

[Tale]

Just buy it on Steam now. It is well worth $60.

Is it worth USD $89.95? That's the steam price for Australians. Fucking hell.

[Tannhauser]

The game has taken to closing by itself and I'm having trouble swapping out favorites.  

[Teleku]

Just buy it on Steam now. It is well worth $60.

Is it worth USD $89.95? That's the steam price for Australians. Fucking hell.

Price you pay for having a strong economy.  Trash your economy if you want cheap games from us!   

[Modern Angel]

What a nearly perfect RPG. God... there is good in the world.

[Teleku]

Sigh.  You fucks may force me to buy this before I wait for the inevitable Christmas sale.

[Tale]

Just buy it on Steam now. It is well worth $60.

Is it worth USD $89.95? That's the steam price for Australians. Fucking hell.

Price you pay for having a strong economy.  Trash your economy if you want cheap games from us!   

Ha. Seems like it's A$80 (US$82) in stores. Might go for a walk over the nearby hills in the sun as the leaves rustle in the wind, so that I can do the same virtually.

[Thrawn]

Best Buy sold my pre-order. Wasted an hour and a half of my friends time driving to the next closest one to see if they had a copy.

Please don't support Best Buy. 

[NiX]

Out of curiosity, why weren't you just getting it from Steam to begin with?  Why bother with Best Buy?

With the $10 credit for pre-ordering, $5 bonus for trade in, I would have only paid $8 for the game after the existing credit I had.

[Fraeg]

hadn't planned on it, but.... winter is arriving, it is cold and what could be better than hunkering down with a nice RPG and a glass of wine?

no stores had it in stock for PC, so I finally created a Steam account and joined the club :P 
Download is at 10% at over 1 mb/s... wonder how long that will last   

Haven't played an RPG since the first Dragon Age and that brought out my inner 13 year old like no game has in ages... Hope this will be similar.

[Paelos]

I'm still waiting 2 months so they can mod this thing, but the gushing is always funny. 

[koro]

I'm still waiting 2 months so they can mod this thing, but the gushing is always funny. 

Same here, pretty much. I spent about an hour tooling around with this at a friend's earlier today, and the UI alone left me completely cold. Doesn't help that I'm still not completely sold on the new magic system.

[lamaros]

Just buy it on Steam now. It is well worth $60.

Is it worth USD $89.95? That's the steam price for Australians. Fucking hell.

Price you pay for having a strong economy.  Trash your economy if you want cheap games from us!  

Nothing to do with our economy, gaming prices here are just stupid. $90 if our dollar is at 50 US cents, $90 if our dollar at parity...

I wont buy it for this reason. (Plus my laptop is old. It could run Fallout 3, but I dunno about this.)

[Sky]

Doesn't help that I'm still not completely sold on the new magic system.

I've taken to healing spells as a mostly heavy armor/axe'n'board warrior type. But I have noticed Exxon seems to have been integral to the design process, there's puddles of oil in every damned cave and ruin.

There's something pretty wicked about stunning an enemy with a shield bash and doing a power attack finishing move. The combat, it has its moments. Crafting armor seems worth it, too.

[Hawkbit]

Hooked my PS3 controller through USB to my PC using the motioninjoy driver.  It solves almost every issue I have with the game, if only I could get my PC upstairs and attached to the TV so I could lay on the couch.  Being able to switch between kyb/mouse and PS3 controller instantly is awesome. 

[Zetor]

I think I can one-up the aussies... it's not even available in my region, and won't be for a foreseeable period of time 

Bethesda made an exclusive distribution deal in Eastern Europe with Cenega, and they are sitting on their hands... for example, the FO:NV Lonesome Road DLC is still not out, even though it's been almost 2 months. Due to the publishing deal, Steam is not allowed to sell the game over here either, and gifting doesn't work. I could use a VPN, but I don't care that much...

[tmp]

I'm still waiting 2 months so they can mod this thing, but the gushing is always funny. 

There's skyrim nexus up and running already.

4 latest mods:

Retextured female underwear
Proper Clean Female Body
Female Muscle Mod
Obligatory Chainmail Bikini

[Xilren's Twin]

Surprising no one, my 2 boys and I are all playing completely differently from each other.  Youngest is barrelling through looking for dragon fights, the dark brotherhood and loot with no magic; older on has gone crafting and enchanting happy, and since I talk to eveyone and read every book I have a laundry list of quest all over the place.  Plus, it seem there is randomness to what you find in many places i.e. we all got something different out of the first barrow boss some of which was pretty impressive for low level loot.  I will easily get another 40 hours out of this one just one character - there's almost too much to do.

Archery can be awesome - shooting a bandit clear off the top of a 5 story tower from across a river and watching them fall was  
Using traps to smush 3 draug was fun too.
Watching my headstrong son get knocked 50 feet in the air by a giant was quite amusing too.

The menu UI is too sluggish and unorganized for the pc.  Yeah looking at constellations for skills up is pretty for 10 seconds, after that it just slow you down.  Plus, would it kill them to sort armor by inventory piece (i.e. all helmets together, all shields) rather than alphabetic?  As usual, some of the theft rules dont make sense - you can loot gold and pick up coin purses with impunity, but dont you dare touch the shirt in my wardrobe or im calling the guards!
Need more weight carrying capacity - my pack rat symptoms are out in full force.  Do they have feather gear in this one?
Most everyone sounds like they're doing a bad Govinator impression which can make it hard to take seriously.  "It's not a tumor!"
And lastly, the bakcwards nature of your left mouse being your right hand and vice versa has made me grrr a few times but ill get used to it.

[tmp]

You can remap which button is tied to which hand under Controls.

[ffc]

There's skyrim nexus up and running already.

4 latest mods:

Retextured female underwear
Proper Clean Female Body
Female Muscle Mod
Obligatory Chainmail Bikini

Hah, identical to the popular Witcher 2 mods when first released.

[Sky]

I also ran into weight issues pretty quickly. Only halfway to affording a house, so blah.

Some of the accents are really good. Some are definitely "Get to the CHOPPA!"

[Fraeg]

Man.... too early to say Meh, but after spending a couple hours playing these things come to light

(keep in mind, some of my gripes have fixes, Operator error on my part etc... but that isn't the point, it should be fucking obvious and intuitive for me to address these things if they can be tweaked):

[Rendakor]

Video settings can be changed from the options menu before launching the game.

[koro]

I'm guessing this is your first Elder Scrolls game, Fraeg?

It's an FPS. It's not Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age; you have to actually go over to look at something. Pure WASD or gamepad stuff. Been this way for ages.

[tmp]

Interesting graphics mod Replaces the default fxaa filter with improved one and a sharpen effect. Can makes quite a difference.

(has a toned down version too, the default can be bit overdone)

[Riggswolfe]

Doesn't help that I'm still not completely sold on the new magic system.

I've taken to healing spells as a mostly heavy armor/axe'n'board warrior type. But I have noticed Exxon seems to have been integral to the design process, there's puddles of oil in every damned cave and ruin.

There's something pretty wicked about stunning an enemy with a shield bash and doing a power attack finishing move. The combat, it has its moments. Crafting armor seems worth it, too.

Hit those puddles of oil with your flame spell and you'll love the results. I killed 3 of those ghoul guys in the first cave with one fire spell this way. Of course, it was compounded by the lantern above their heads falling and causing a mini-fireball all on its own.

Have you bought any smithing perks? I bought the smith steel perk but can't actually smith any steel. It's beyond annoying. I don't know if it is one of the bugs Bethesda is famous for or if I have to find a better forge for it to work.

[Quinton]

On my way back to town from Bleak Falls (fast travel? bah! you miss too much stuff that way), I was attacked by a wandering Novice Necromancer.

I made short work of her, looted her corpse, and was getting on my way again when another Novice Necromancer wandered up, reanimated the corpse of the first one, and proceeded to attack me. 

I defeated them, but points to the NPC for making good use of their skills and the materials at hand!

[Modern Angel]

I actually don't mind the UI, surprisingly. The only thing that bugs me is that the yes/no dialogue is mouse click only, while everything else is keyboard. Other than that, it's not super huge font and boxy. Not perfect but better than most console/PC releases.

I think the gripes are nuts. No game is perfect but, after playing a godawful amount the past day, I can say that this is as close to perfect as any other single player game I've bought in ages. Morrowind, BG2 and Planescape are my holy trinity of RPGs but this is well on its way to getting in there.

[Sky]

Hit those puddles of oil with your flame spell and you'll love the results.

Have you bought any smithing perks? I bought the smith steel perk but can't actually smith any steel. It's beyond annoying.

That's why I mentioned the inexplicable omnipresent oil puddles in response to a quote about magic. I've been gaming since 1975, I know what oil puddles are for! 

Are you sure you have the proper ingredients? I can smith steel just fine, and it's better than the stuff the Jarl gave me after I put it on the workbench. Finding a smelter was annoying, since there's not one in the first village (it's in the first town the story takes you to).

NPC story: I exited the first mine and the bandit attacked me. For some reason when I killed him it registered as a crime and an imperial courier saw it. So I chased him about a mile down the road (damn heavy armor and melee character) and chopped him up, getting a message that the last witnessed had been removed, so the bounty was removed :)

But that begins to touch on something I've found: melee is screwed in this game. One NPC summoned a fire daedra on my level 8 ass and it was so difficult to close to melee range that I died after only getting in two shots on her retreating ass. Also,


I hope my leveling up because I'm doing a lot of smithing isn't going to screw me.

[caladein]

The interface as a whole is really annoying.  The shop and dialogue menus make no sense to me.  The perk selection screen is really pretty but I feel like it would work a lot better on PC if it was zoomed out.  The map is pretty useless too.  On the plus side, the favorites list is fantastic as long as you keep it short.  Still, there's hope from modders.

Also, the quest log sucks, but that's expected from Bethesda.

Overall I'm enjoying it, but it's nothing beyond what I would expect from a TES game insofar as I can see the appeal but I just can't buy in.

[Ruvaldt]

But that begins to touch on something I've found: melee is screwed in this game. One NPC summoned a fire daedra on my level 8 ass and it was so difficult to close to melee range that I died after only getting in two shots on her retreating ass.

I'm playing an orcish soldiery kind of character with heavy armor and a sword/shield.  I'm at level 11 now with some perks in 1-handed and block and can safely say that with some development melee characters become much more playable.  I had a lot of trouble in the beginning as well, but now find myself blocking, bashing with my shield and then slashing twice takes down most common enemies.  I am training archery though because like you said, when things start running there really isn't any way for me to catch them and yeah, the dragon thing.

I haven't fought anything really big lately though so I'm not sure how I would fare against a dragon right now.  I know I attempted to fight a giant a few levels ago and he one-shotted me into the stratosphere.

[AcidCat]

This game is amazing. So much better than Oblivion.

[Sky]

The actual melee combat is pretty well done, once I learned how to properly use the shield offensively. Just those few situations, and I forgot the basic rule of pet casters: kill the caster! Just killed a necro that had two skeletons on me...with one power shot :)

SLI users: nab the 11/10 beta drivers, they added a profile for Skyrim and now it's running proper SLI. Went from pretty smooth on my gtx 460 to silky smooth, just like that!

I also find it much better than Oblivion, not sure how much is attributed to my obsession with my heritage, though. And you can chop wood!